I work for a bank, and we get audited by both the Feds and the state every two years. Usually they alternate years, so we are either getting ready for an audit, getting audited, or responding to an audit.
There's nothing like having someone over your shoulder saying things like:
"How would this look if I had to explain this to an auditor?"
"If the auditor were to ask about this, what would I say?"
Banks will pay the extra money to secure an ATM because if we don't, we get screwed. Our board of directors finds out that the IT department didn't secure the ATMs, bringing down our overall audit score. Our bosses boss gets questioned. We spend money. We fix the problem. We look at everything else that could go wrong, and try to fix it ahead of time. We test, and prove that we fixed it with documentation.
Meanwhile, independant private auditors that we hire scan our network and tell us things we need to fix. Sometimes what they suggest that we do defies reason. We either have to do it, or explain why we can't. We then have to explain to several layers of management why those suggestions are bunk. Sometimes its easier to go with the suggestions after all.
Now, elections are local matters. City by city, county by county, state by state. Who audits them? Which voting jurisdiction wants to spend the money to have someone point out that the new machines they just bought are vulnerable to such-and-such condition using tin foil and fingerprint molds made of jello? The local officals then look bad, spend more money, and then lose the next election for overspending. The idea of something being "good enough" happens here.
And let's face it, let's say the feds set up a auditing board for state and local elections. Several things will happen:
+ Local government officials may go nuts at having federal officials show up at their local town hall trying to run things.
+ If a bank fails an audit, the Feds will take it over. If it's really bad, they'll shut the doors that day and the bank may never re-open. If the county voting machines don't pass federal muster, what will the Feds do? Invalidate the votes? Shut down the voting? You can always go to another bank, or not bank at all. Where else can you go vote? Voting is a right, banking is not.
Simply put, banks have to compete with each other, and are highly regulated. If the Feds don't like how we do things, we change them. If we can't give the customer what they want, they go elsewhere. You have to vote under your local government, and there is nowhere else to go unless you move. Voting is not regulated by the Feds because of separation of powers between the states and the Feds. So, yeah, ATMs will be more secure than voting machines, and will be for the foreseeable future.
The only fix is to have an enforceable Federal audit, with penalties for mismangement. I beleive that people who tend to think that will happen tend to beleive that we are a government with fifty administrative districts, rather than fifty states that have a common government.
I beleive that if you want to give the Feds the power to regulate elections, you then give the Feds to power to rig the elections. The hue and cry over Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 will be minor compared to the fits people will have when their favorite candidate loses nationally when the "exit polls" said otherwise, and it just so happens that the previous President was of the same party as the "winner". But the Feds said everything was kosher, because they controlled every part of the process, and invalidated votes from places that just happen to be predominantly voting the other party.
